


forrest gump

by nonamebut



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, Archer Lee Donghyuck | Haechan, Childhood Friends, Flame Alchemist Mark Lee, Happy Ending?, M/M, fmab au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 08:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20206930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonamebut/pseuds/nonamebut
Summary: In Mark's mind, Donghyuck is always running.





	forrest gump

**Author's Note:**

> [i'm thinking about you and you seem so unaffected (and i'm fighting not to feel but nothing works)](https://open.spotify.com/track/6wpUNL6pvnzjehb8Az0jmt?si=WJsWZ2A5RFCSn7tlwH9Iag)
> 
> mark: 0.2s of forrest gump  
my brain cells at 2am: HUH
> 
> originally i wanted to do thg au but then when i decided what songs to link i suddenly thought why not make it a fullmetal alchemist fusion!! also there's minor character death (the characters technically don't even have any speaking lines) but it's hinted in the last section if you needed a warning.

Neither Mark nor Donghyuck remembers their first meeting, but it's a moment that their parents never fail to bring up when they could, a story meant to be told over and over again. It's not particularly unique or striking, but it somehow always inspires a chuckle or two from those who hear it, so it's become a sort of fail-safe anecdote. It goes a little something like this:

When Mark and Donghyuck are four, their parents purposefully place them together at the Training Facility, hoping that the two will grow to be inseparable just like their parents did. Tiny Donghyuck takes one look at the older boy before he decides to do what Mark's mother calls, 'the beginning of the end.'

Donghyuck gets a hold of Mark's shoulders and pushes him right into the ground.

Tiny Mark has always had a bit of a temper, so naturally, he grits his teeth, picks himself off the ground, and gives Donghyuck a sour look. Donghyuck just laughs, kicks at Mark's knee, then takes off in the opposite direction.

They get in trouble with the instructor on their first day of the Career Program because Mark is too petty to stop chasing Donghyuck, and Donghyuck never stops running, and running.

—

Mark moves out of the Victor's Village at eleven years old to train with Donghyuck's family at the edge of the district. Originally, Mark's entire family was to relocate, but it was decided that Donghyuck himself would start living with Mark's parents next year when he himself turns eleven.

The thing is: Mark can shoot arrows just fine, but there's always been a part of him that's felt like his hands were too shaky, too inappropriate. And besides, Mark has always been more interested in the studies Donghyuck's father conducted here, at their little homey facility. Of the secrets of the Lee fire alchemy.

It was easier to convince their parents thanks to the fact that Donghyuck is, in turn, more interested in archery and aim than the science of combustion. As wannabe alchemist Mark puts it: equivalent exchange.

Maintaining the Lee Legacies aside, here's the _other_ thing: Alchemy isn't the only thing Mark finds himself learning a lot about these days.

It's one thing to be Donghyuck's best friend from the comfort of his city house, to mostly see the boy while they were at school or when they hung out at the mall. It's another thing to know what he's like when no one's looking, walls all down.

Mark doesn't mean to do it, the first time. But the transmutation patterns were all blurring into each other on the paper in front of him and he itches to stretch, to move around.

He hears it when he nears the backdoor. At first, the sound is unrecognizable, but Mark can tell Donghyuck's voice anywhere.

Moving to the kitchen window, Mark peers outside to find Donghyuck, barefooted and only in his pajamas, singing to a bird perched on his finger. Mark realizes it must be a Mockingjay when the tiny thing sings back.

He doesn't mean to do it the first time, but he does the second, and the third, and all the times after that. Mark always intends to ask Donghyuck about it the next day, about why doesn't he sing for choir club at school and why he's never told Mark about it before, but he takes one look at Donghyuck's eyes, hardening and preparing for another long day of training, and he just can't.

So he keeps the clandestine melodies to himself, the one living proof of promising prodigy Lee Donghyuck's vulnerabilities. At least, he does until he fucks it up.

Yes, he doesn't do it on purpose. But once, at the crack of dawn, when Donghyuck finishes one of his favorite songs, Mark subconsciously shifts to the side. He bumps into something, or whatever, and it makes a soft sound. Mark winces.

Donghyuck startles when the Mockingjay takes flight, and Mark quickly ducks under the sink to hide. When Mark hears a shuffling, shifting sound, he stretches up to look out the window again to see Donghyuck's back, running farther and farther away, towards the woodsy area across the house.

After that, Mark never catches Donghyuck singing again.

—

On the night before the reaping of Mark's senior year, one of the girls in the year below him takes him aside when the party starts to die down.

Mark might come across as dopey and silly, but he is not stupid; he knows what she's about to tell him, fears it almost. He feels sorry, because there's no way he can possibly reciprocate, and everyone probably knows that by now.

But, still. He guesses he can kind of appreciates her boldness, how she meets his gaze head on and tells him, without any cloud of doubt in her eyes, "I like you."

Mark forecasts that she's just doing this as some form of send off, for when he volunteers for tomorrow's Reaping, so he feels no remorse for what he's about to do.

But suddenly, there's soft cursing, the sound of someone bumping into something and rattling whatever that is. Before Mark can so much as gently let this girl down, he pulls away and looks down the hallway to see a familiar, retreating figure. Flittering away, a silent songbird in flight.

—

Mark shifts nervously in his seat, eyes glued to the screen displaying all twenty-four tributes rising up the tubes to find a vast, green arena.

Around him, the other mentors and potential sponsors mutter and mutter. If he strained his ears, he would even hear the Game Makers commenting something about how these Games better appease the Capitol, the districts. How the districts have been rather restless, lately.

But Mark, for all his empathy and kindness and humanity, could not care less about the rumors of riots, of rumblings of rebellion. All he really cares about is the sunkissed boy on the platform closest to the left, and whether or not he makes it alive today, and the next day, and all the days after.

The familiar countdown sounds, and Mark grabs the remote to pull up a closer camera angle to see Donghyuck better. He knows he shouldn't worry, that this is what both of them have trained all their lives for, but he can't help but feel so, so nervous.

They talked about strategy, yesterday. Donghyuck joked around as always, but he seemed to be listening. Mark hopes he took his words to heart, but he can't help but think of how Donghyuck's body folded away from him, how his feet were angled towards the door, his shifting knees bouncing and pointing anywhere but at Mark.

Mark usually cares about his image, you see. It's part of how he won his Games. Was charming, alluring, but also silly enough to endear himself to the sponsors. And when it came for his time in the arena, he smiled into the camera and let it all burn with a wicked snap of his fingers.

Mark usually cares about his image, so when he starts cursing at his screen, displaying Donghyuck running away, away, away from the cornucopia and towards the trees, even the most eccentric Capitolite sponsors give him a weird look.

—

Finally, finally, Mark lunges forward and grabs a fistful of Donghyuck's hoodie, the old fabric giving way under his fingers. "God, please stop running." _Stop running from me_.

Mark hates how it's all come to this. He wants to be a good person, he really, really does. But after all he's done, after all they're done, there's no way they can go back. The only way they can go is forward, but Donghyuck is just making it so difficult, with all his running and running in circles, always darting and skirting around the problem.

Taking a deep breath, he tries to make Donghyuck understand. "Please. You're all I've got, now. Don't get it?"

Mark doesn't care about the rebellion, the fall of the Capitol. He could care less about the propaganda District 13's cooked up around the two of them: of the boy who was on fire, and his little Mockingjay. No, all Mark really cares about is—

"Well, I'm _sorry_, Mark," the very reason for Mark's frustration, anguish, happiness, everything, almost spits in his face. Donghyuck's eyes are rain clouds. "Have you ever stopped to wonder that I've lost my family, too? My mom, my dad, all my siblings—!"

"That's not what I meant, Donghyuck, and you know it." Mark sighs. "And just to make sure you don't misunderstand.."

Mark feels Donghyuck shaking under his hands. Runs a palm up his side, trails it up his shoulder, takes a detour where his collarbones jut out just so before they curl at the nape of Donghyuck's neck. "I can't afford to lose you too."

"_Oh_." Mark feels Donghyuck swallow under his hands, the same hands that have burnt and stabbed and hurt. Donghyuck is being held by these very hands, yet this time, he doesn't try to run at all.

+++

("You're not afraid?"

"Of your fire?" The _of you?_ goes unasked.

They are fifteen and at the peak of their idiotic youth, hiding out in one of the hallways of the funeral home before any of Mark's aunts can find him and make the poor boy say something about his late parents.

Mark's parents never got to see his fire. He took too long to get it right, took too long failing and failing and now they're gone forever and the last thing they ever thought about Minhyung was that he had failed.

"Never," Donghyuck answers before Mark can say anything stupid.

There's a shuffling, shifting sound and it makes Mark look down to their feet: Donghyuck has made a show of planting his feet on the ground, like a tree stubbornly taking root.

Mark laughs but his eyes are suddenly quite blurry. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Donghyuck echoes, reaching out to hold Mark's hands. "Yeah.")

x x

**Author's Note:**

> [you don't have to do a thing but listen to me sing (i know you miss the world, the one you knew)](https://open.spotify.com/track/3sC62j1Cjeea5tAhcyGcs8?si=6MeeXBnWS3GRUqm5-6yffQ)
> 
> thank you for reading this spontaneous madness lmao.. 
> 
> my royai bias jumped out in this fic ;u; i love royai they're one of the only shonen anime canon ships with rights!! ok i will stop talking and sleep good night have a great rest of the weekend my fellow nctzens <3


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